A grou of “civic leaders” met with Los Angeles school board president Steve Zimmer to ask him to put them in charge of screening candidates for the new superintendent.
Some of these groups are funded by the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, the Billionaire Boys Club. They supported Former superintendent John Deasy, whose autocratic style antagonized teachers and whose legally dubious iPad plan is under FBI investigation.
Of I recall correctly, some of these individuals helped build the multi-million war chest to defeat Steve Zimmer for re-election.
Oh, dear. How shocking it would be if the LAUSD board picked a leader who didn’t buckle to the pro-privatization gang? What if it were an educator who was unafraid of Eli Broad? He has admitted he knows nothing about education, but he can’t stop trying to control it with his billions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just posted a comment about this on the Kevin Johnson post. It is all the same power brokers who are pushing to be the Blue Ribbon group chosen to lead the search and vetting for the new LAUSD Supt.
Prime among these who represent Eli Broad, the Waltons, the Wassermans, and their billionaire cronies, is the supposed non-profit United Way. This sleasy ‘charity’ seems to be only a front for the Wall Street profiteers who want to privatize all public schools and kill all unions. Their past ‘charming’ LA leader left last year when he saw that he was ‘outed’ in LA as a leading charterizer, and he went to work in Oakland for Marion Edelman’s foundation, which has now become suspect too as another Wall Street shill 501c3.
Taxpayer and donor money funds all these non profits…so wake up America and see how your donations and taxes are being misused.
Also California Endowment is part of this group who anointed themselves the Grand Poobahs of LA and are determined that NO real public advocates have any voice in choosing the new Supt.
This means no real parents, teachers, administrators, and activists will be invited to, allowed to, sit at the table. This is a major travesty in this district. There are activists from all these real groups that should have a voice…yet LAUSD and the BoE still treats the real public as though their voices are only NOISE as stated by the former Asst. Supt. when being caught in his web of lies about the iPad scandal.
And all of these elite Blue Ribbonaires are on the literal and figurative staff of Eli Broad who calls all the shots.
Ellen, the firm I work at used to throw an ice cream social at 3pm during each summer, and have a little presentation about and from United Way; then request from us, the peons who make $50,000 annually while the partners made millions, to donate a percentage of our salaries to United Way. This stopped about 2 years ago.
You have it all wrong. Charity Navigator gives the United Way of Los Angeles very high rating. Overall rating is 90.59%. Its rating is even higher than the Red Cross. I have no idea why it is the front for Wall Street profiteers.
Raj, United Way of Los Angeles is in the pockets of the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. It led the cheerleading for John Deasy. It sponsored a report by the NCTQ calling for more firings of LA teachers and test-based evaluation. Since you probably agree with this agenda, you won’t understand why supporters of teachers and public education don’t like the United Way. Send them money if you wish. It is a free country.
Because its leaders sold out.
Ellen, United Way set up foundations for Sandy Hook one to three days BEFORE the incident occurred. They Media Bubble trying to control that truth of the time stamp and date on the internet is hardly convincing.
That was not only about gun control, but about mind control, big pharma, bid data collection, and amping up the the ed admin to control and push out the real educators. Sorry if this seems too difficult to believe, but the structure holds all the bones for that skeleton initiative.
Why?, why? why? am I watching the “Stockholm Syndrome” play out before my eyes? Why?
Far more shady than Stockholm Syndrome, Mark.
These self appointed community elitists (yes, even those leading non profits such as United Way and California Endowment, and who make huge salaries) want to be in charge of all things that go on in most areas of our community, and they have their elected shills throughout government.
They are now focused again on LAUSD in order to do the bidding of their leader, Eli Broad, and insure his takeover of at least another 50% of public schools for his charter onschluss. They insist on pretending to be ‘the voice of LA’ and want to impose another Broad Academy Supt and staff on LAUSD. Why should these deconstructionists once again have the ONLY voice in choosing a new Supt for LAUSD? Broad was the instigator and director of hiring Deasy, and he colluded with Villaraigosa, and Cortines, to impose his will without any search. Deasy damaged LAUSD so badly it may never recover…and Deasy is under investigation by the FBI and the SEC for his potential frauds.
Why is Zimmer who is now Prez of the BoE, even meeting with them? Why isn’t Zimmer meeting with those of us whom he promised to meet with, but then he hides from us? Why doesn’t he want the voice of someone like Robert Skeels who lives in the inner city and truly represents the residents, to be heard by all of LA voters and taxpayers? Why is Zimmer pandering to the Eli Broad?
Why doesn’t the LA Times report any of this?
These Blue Ribbonaires (who represent only the billionaires who are intent on privatizing all public ed, and killing all labor unions) continue to use their power structure (including too many local politicians who represent inner city areas) to wage a war filled with lies, and they misinform and use ill-informed inner city parents and others, to be show pieces and shills in their structured and orchestrated street theater.
addendum…see Anthony Cody’s video of yesterday’s march of teachers, parents, and community to protest in front the Broad Museum, Eli’s impending takeover of at least another 50% of LAUSD public schools and convert them to profitable charters.
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On the occasion of the opening of his museum, billionaire Eli Broad got an earful from students, teachers and parents opposing his plan to dismantle Los Angeles public schools.
Broad Rally from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.
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Ouch…please someone more skilled at this than I , go to Cody’s blog site and copy the video and post it. I could not get it to copy.
@ Ellen Lubic.
Thank you for saying so! I’ve met about 6 parents at our local school this past week who appear as plants. They are either newly working either directly with our school district in DATA or Psychology who are deeply involved with influencing policy, or with research firms working with the district to collect more data. Others from nearby universities in data and med research and also working in the ed field.
The Billionaire Boys Club has swooped in and has perforated natural common sense for the sake of turd analysis and big pharma.
And it appears based on comments and other blogs that Zimmer isn’t all that he appears to be. Beware LA!
At the anti-Broad rally yesterday, a middle school teacher spoke to me about how the enrollment is going down. Charters are part of the reason. The school has had to release 4 teachers and no longer can afford to keep all their arts programs. So, as is always the case, the rest of the students suffer. But, Broad doesn’t care about them, as long as he can claim the lionshare.
Someone needs to look at how many empty classrooms there are across the city, especially in schools that have been newly built. The fear is that the charters will increasingly demand space in more and more district schools and perhaps even go the route of New York and Chicago and start shutting schools down just to hand them over to Broad’s promised charters. However great it would be if these charters had their facilities handed to them on a platter. Could this mean more profit and higher salaries for charter CEO’s and their friends?
I don’t think the taxpayers of Los Angeles will be happy to hear that the local school construction bonds have somehow benefitted a group of corporations that have NO requirement to be financially accountable to those same taxpayers who are footing the bill now and for years to come.
Local school attendance is being “spoked” out into all different directions. This achieves a dissolution of community and creates the segregation desired by Broad and his toadies. They will equip new schools with all aspects of Big Brother components. I’ll bet his funded charters have already accomplished this task.
Where is the community members,you know, the parents,teachers, students who are responsible for LAUSD functioning as a public school district. We’ll see how Zimmerand this deform board handles this.
If any one of those members are affiliated with with Broad then there should be a resounding NO… We are dealing with a hostile takeover!
This is something I wrote to our superintendent and school board members. The work load for teachers has become impossible.
I hope you will blog more about it. So much of the work is nonsense.
Thanks for all you do.
Donna Shubert.
Dear Superintendent and School Board Members,
I am assuming everyone has seen the I Love Lucy chocolate assembly line episode. If not, please Google it. It is entitled, “Switching Jobs” and is so entertaining.
In this episode Lucy and Ethel get quick instructions on how to wrap chocolate candies in paper on the assembly line and as the line speeds up and they cannot keep up they stuff the chocolates in their hats, dresses and mouths. Hysterically funny. Their boss, thinking they are doing fine with the production rate, speeds up the assembly line. Of course, it becomes even funnier but it isn’t funny to be a Broward County teacher, being on the teaching assembly line and having the work come in faster and faster than you can process it. Before you can understand it, make sense of it, comprehend it, place it in your teaching plans and figure out how to utilize it more, new and different work comes down the line. The volume of work being pushed on teachers is absolutely impossible to keep up with even if you work hours and hours of unpaid overtime and have your unpaid family members and volunteers help.
The assembly line has to stop. We are being swamped with work. We are hit with new ideas, practices, standards, curriculum, tests, programs, paperwork, and plans on a daily basis and it is all becoming one big mess. Champs, technology tests, standards posting, Lucy Caulkins, DRA, Rigby, Flckrs, send this form to the office, send that form by this date, fill out this form about your tracking system, have you been able to do digital lessons, watch this video, go to that meeting, join this committee, ready for another training, CARE cycle, Reflex Math, go to another meeting, copy your own materials, pick up and deliver your own mail and supplies, did you watch the Brainshark, make sure to do RTIs, prepare for data chats and don’t forget to get the Lenovo computers up and running even though they aren’t compatible with the Macs we have been using for decades. By the way would you like to take a chess course? In your spare time if you need something for your students write a grant. And so on and so on. Every department thinks they are the only one assigning work, every job has a timetable for completion, everyday is becoming a day where teachers feel defeated and overwhelmed and teaching in Broward County has become an impossible situation for so many teachers.
Please notice I am not even talking about the work we need to do for the students — plan and prepare lessons, grade papers, communicate with parents, hang bulletin boards, etc.. Broward Schools seems to think that is our secondary job.
So if the goal of Broward Schools is to demoralize its classroom work force – your teachers — you have succeeded. If your goal is to destroy those of us who work directly with children — you are close to achieving your goal as more and more teachers deal with stress-related illnesses. If your hope was that teachers would be so overworked they would quit or retire early — mission accomplished, many have, many are. If you believe that paying teachers poorly forcing them to work two and three jobs so they have no time to look for a real job that pays a decent salary and doesn’t require them to find two or three other part-time jobs — you have outdone yourselves. The lack of communications between teachers and policy setters at K. C. Wright is astounding yet oddly school board members are going to the Ritz-Carlton to learn how communicate amongst themselves. You work right near each other in the same building, you have countless conference rooms, sit down and talk and then bring in teachers and find out how to save the classrooms, students and teachers in Broward schools. The way teachers are treated can no longer be put on the back burner. These issues have to be addressed just as transportation and bond issues had and have to be addressed.
Working for Broward Schools is far from being fun. It is turning into a horror show with teachers having little or no time to actually prepare for and teach their students. Enough! Let the administrators at K. C. Wright sit in a room together and figure out what policies and practices will truly serve the students of Broward County and if they cannot send them into the classrooms to work for a while. They will figure it out real fast.
Sincerely,
Donna Shubert
“That’s all I can standz, I can’t standz no more.” — Popeye “If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much.” — Marion Edelman Wright
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What allows these people to inject themselves into the decision making process? What special powers to they possess, besides money and a destruction bent, to make decisions? I hope the LAUSD doesn’t fall for this nonsense.
Diane Ravitch – Please be our next superintendent!!
-An LAUSD teaCHER
Here’s some antiBroad medicine! Walnut Valley Unified School District in Los Angeles is being sued by parents for not informing the of their right to opt out of Common Core tests! Just saw it in NBC4 News, but couldn’t find it on nbcla.com.
By the way, remember when Broad and all fancied the Parent Trigger getting 75 schools to covert to charterism? They got 4 schools. Now they fancy 260 schools. I say they will get 4. Okay, 5. You’d think wealthy investors would see the track record risk in betting on charters.
Sorry for the typos. I got a little bit excited to post.
Good grief! I just had a flash. Those people educated by that gang will be migrating to our states. We have enough trouble with the Koch Brothers Gang slipping across our state lines to control the votes.
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In other news regarding the business community’s war on education, a home builder member of the State College of Florida Board has successfully eliminated tenure for faculty altogether it seems, with a unanimous vote from his fellow members of the Board of Trustees.
Note that not one single member of the Board of Trustees is an educator; all are political appointeess of Governor Rick Scott. Elections have consequences.
He says his business-oriented changes can always be revesed if they are not successful. Of course the college’s reputation will be destroyed and the disruption and chaos will take years to sort out but it’s the neoliberal/neoconservative ALEC way.
http://www.bradenton.com/2015/09/22/6004035_carlos-beruffs-scf-proposals-would.html?rh=1
I quit donating to the United Way of Tampa Bay after they held a series of pro-war conserts for George W. Bush leading to the Iraq debacle. I had been a donor for many years but when I objected to their rightwing political advocay I was ignored. We also stopped the yearly United Way campaign in our district after scandals tarnished themreputation of the leadership.
@ LeftCoastTeacher
If the PJI wants it, I have emails back and forth with the State Dept of Ed regarding the clear obfuscation intent by the school districts when it failed to inform parents of their rights to opt the kids out. Some districts have gone so far as to write into their policy that teachers will be punished if they inform parents of this right!
http://edsource.org/2015/lawsuit-schools-failed-to-inform-parents-of-right-to-opt-out-of-common-core-aligned-tests/87041